After their mural collaboration for POW! WOW! Hawaii earlier this year (covered), Hawaii-based artists Kamea Hadar and Defer (seen above adding his calligraphic embellishments to Hadar’s figurative imagery) began a year-long series of collaborative walls, gallery shows and other creative projects. On this note, this Thursday, August 7th, they will be opening a show together at 1AM Gallery in San Francisco, showing a new body of mixed media works on canvas.
The show and the entire series of projects, Paradise Lost, refers to John Milton’s epic poem by the same title. Through their works, the artists reflect on this Biblical story of Satan’s temptation of Adam and Eve and their exile from the Garden of Eden by incorporating their personal experiences from life on Hawaii. Defer’s typographic style, through which he creates patterns and even abstract scenery itself, combined with Hadar’s realistic oil portraits, present a unique collaboration of two very diverse but complementing styles. By transferring the ancient story to the modern times, “their work reflects on how the modern world of urbanization has inevitably transformed the idyllic oasis into a new thriving cultural hub.” Along with the opening of this show, the artists will create two large-scale murals in SF as well.
After this show, the artists are planning more murals, gallery shows, and artistic projects from the Paradise Lost series in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Israel, and Hawaii.
